Items tagged with systems

It's hard to believe this year is nearly over. It feels as if our holiday gift guides are being assembled at an ever more rapid pace. Perhaps that has to do with the non-stop innovation in the tech sector, and our insatiable desire for ever-advancing product development. Each year, the leaps in processing power and graphics performance, in addition to the miniaturization and integration of advanced technologies, seems to constantly push the envelope, which means that there are almost always plenty of suitable replacements for our favorite gadgets and gizmos. And if you're on the hunt for gifts...Read more...

When Xotic PC asked us to be judge and jury of its Executioner gaming system, we thought to ourselves, "this better be one helluva setup to warrant its killer moniker," and spoiler alert, it is. We'll get to the benchmarks and other particulars in due time, but there's more to this $6,500 PC than raw performance alone. Yes, we said $6,500, which is the rounded up cost of the version Xotic PC sent us. When shopping an Executioner, you begin by picking one of four baseline setups dubbed Stages 1-4. Ours is a Stage 4 configuration that starts at just shy of $5,100, though with the custom upgrades...Read more...

Had things gone to plan, Steam Machines would be a shipping product by now. However, Valve threw a wrench into the works when it decided that more time was needed to tweak its custom Linux-based Steam OS and fine tune the platform's accompanying Steam Controller. That decision left several partnering OEMs and boutique system builders in limbo, as they had already put in the necessary R&D to develop living room boxes that would serve as official Steam Machines. Hence a new category was born -- the PC gaming console. Systems like the Syber Vapor are full-fledged PCs stuffed inside console-sized...Read more...

All in one systems are all about balance. Attempting to cram an entire PC’s worth of components into the back of what amounts to a slightly wider-than-normal display can be an iffy proposition. Pare down the specifications too much and you wind up with a limp machine that’s obsolete by the time you get it. Jam in too many high-performance components and the price skyrockets to a point that you wonder if a different form factor might have been a better option, not to mention the additional thermal and acoustic concerns. Lenovo’s B Series all in one systems are decidedly mid-range in both...Read more...

We’ve seen a lot of cool stuff coming out of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, but one of the most interesting has to be Cyberpower PC’s Fang Trinity gaming PC. The Fang Trinity features a unique tri-zone case from DeepCool (dubbed the Trinity concept) that looks somewhat like a Star Wars Imperial Shuttle. Each zone contains an array of components and the wiring is snaked through the case through a central cylinder that also houses the power button. We could ramble on about tech specs and what makes the Cyberpower PC Fang Trinity so intriguing, but it’ll probably be better if you just take...Read more...

Welcome to the era of dual-mode devices, where the mantra "bigger is better" rules the day. Need an example? Take smartphones -- Samsung's been serving up large size handsets for the past several years, some of which are so big that it warranted creating a brand new category. Even Apple jumped on the big device bandwagon with the recent launch of its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models. Do you know what you end up with if you take that same mantra and apply it to PCs? You get "Dell's XPS 18 Portable All-in-One Desktop with Touch," a hybrid system that turns a giant sized Windows 8.1 tablet into a...Read more...

Welcome to the era of dual-mode devices, where the mantra "bigger is better" rules the day. Need an example? Take smartphones -- Samsung's been serving up large size handsets for the past several years, some of which are so big that it warranted creating a brand new category. Even Apple jumped on the big device bandwagon with the recent launch of its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models. Do you know what you end up with if you take that same mantra and apply it to PCs? You get "Dell's XPS 18 Portable All-in-One Desktop with Touch," a hybrid system that turns a giant sized Windows 8.1...Read more...

Thick, heavy gaming notebooks are a bit out of fashion, but MSI (a company that also has slim gaming notebooks to sell) is outing a beastly desktop replacement rig that purports to destroy benchmarks. In any case, MSI seems to have pulled out all the stops for the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro. It has a 17.3-inch display (1920x1080) and runs on an Intel Core i7-4710Q (2.5GHz, up to 3.4GHz), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M (8GB), and 32GB or 24GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM. On the storage side, you can configure a GT72 Dominator Pro with up to four 128GB SSDs (M.2) in RAID 0 in tandem with a nice big 1TB (7200rpm) HDD....Read more...

The race to develop a driverless car is on, driven in large part by the efforts of Google, although plenty of other companies such as Intel and Ford are investing heavily into developing such technology as well. You can count Nissan as one major car maker that’s in the fray, as CEO Carlos Ghosn revealed the company’s plans to reporters in Tokyo. Nissan has a roadmap for a nearly autonomous car by 2020. By 2016, Nissan will have vehicles that can self-park; by 2018, they’ll be able to change lanes without driver intervention, and by 2020 they’ll be able to navigate intersections...Read more...

It seems that the era of bulky gaming laptop beasts is over as most PC builders are releasing slim machines that deliver impressive gaming performance in surprisingly svelte form factors. Origin PC and CyberPowerPC are on the bandwagon as both companies are releasing new gaming notebooks. The Origin PC EVO 15-S weighs 4.36 lbs and measures .79 inches thick and features a 15.6-inch Full HD eDP display (with a 3K option coming soon); under the hood rumbles an Intel Core i7-4710HQ chip and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M 3GB GPU. The storage configuration is tantalizing: it’s comprised of a pair...Read more...

Two years ago saw the release of the Raspberry Pi Model B, a $35 computer board running Linux, and in the meantime we’ve also seen the $25 Model A emerge. Now the Raspberry Pi Model B+ is here, and the team is calling it “the final evolution of the original Rasperry Pi”. Although the B+ has the same ARM-based BCM2835 processor, 512MB RAM, and $35 price tag as the Model B, there are several key improvements, including two additional USB 2.0 ports (for a total of 4 four), a slicker push-push microSD slot that replaces the old friction-fit slot, and a 40-pin GPIO header that replaces...Read more...

Sometimes, you just have to pull out all the stops, which is essentially what Dell is doing by making its Alienware Aurora gaming desktop available with the option of including an NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z GPU. Alienware notes that the Titan Z boasts 5760 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR5 memory, and 8 TeraFLOPS of compute power. Of course, there’s plenty of other good stuff available for the Aurora. You can configure a system with an Intel Core i7-4820K (up to 3.9GHz), 8GB (4 x 2GB) of quad-channel DDR3-1600MHz RAM, 2TB 7200rpm HDD, and double-layer 24x CD/DVD burner ODD with a Titan Z for $3,799...Read more...

The PC market has been decidedly down as of late, as tablets in particular have taken a big chunk of the market share. Thus, many have been bemoaning the death of the PC while others (most of us at HH included) have been more optimistic about the future of the PC. Gartner has given reason for the latter view in a new report. Projecting that computing devices overall (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles, and phones) should see a 4.2% increase in 2014, Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal added, "2014 will be marked by a relative revival of the global PC market.” Lenovo M58e Desktop Granted, what...Read more...

Months after first announcing the availability of the $350 Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, the new device is now shipping. More to the point, some 10,000 DK2s are shipping from the factory this July, and a Team Oculus post on Oculus’ developer forums stated that more than half of the units will be through distribution centers by the end of the month. Oculus Rift DK2 The earliest devs can expect their DK2s is July 14th. Oculus says it received about 45,000 preorders, but it’s already behind on manufacturing; even though some people were told their shipments were landing in July, most won’t...Read more...